


211. night fever

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [297]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-22 22:20:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10706319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: “She says she feels it,” Helena says. “Her sister’s feelings. She feels them."





	211. night fever

**Author's Note:**

> drmelfi asked: I would love to read something about Sarah and Helena in the Two Eves AU.
> 
> If you aren't familiar with [Two Eves](sharkodactyl.tumblr.com/tagged/two%20eves/chrono), the concept is thus: Rachel got her grubby little mitts on Helena's babies, Helena went to the island to get them back, Helena managed to get just one of them back. Helena raises Eve. The other baby is lost.

There’s a Disney movie playing on the television and Eve is draped across Helena’s lap, a lock of brown hair stuck to her face. Helena gently tucks her daughter’s hair behind her ear and watches her, the round shape of her face, her mouth slightly open in dreaming.

“She’s gonna miss the ending,” Sarah says, and when Helena tilts her neck to look at her Sarah hands her a water bottle. Helena was thirsty, but she couldn’t stand up because of the weight of her daughter sprawled across her legs. It’s gotten like this, with Helena and her sister; she feels Sarah’s aches, sometimes, in her bones.

“She says she feels it,” Helena says. “Her sister’s feelings. She feels them.

“I should have gone back,” she says, and in her sleep Eve murmurs something and nuzzles against Helena’s knee. Sarah sits down next to her. Helena cracks open the water bottle and drinks, and on the screen Anna is talking fiercely about never giving up. It doesn’t matter if Eve misses the ending. She’s seen _Frozen_ so many times – it’s her favorite. Two sisters. One in a frozen castle, the other one coming to save her.

Sarah reaches out and touches Eve’s hair, gentle. Her face is a sea of terrible things. _I should have gone back_ is the wrong thing to say to Sarah, who always feels like she should have gone back. Where, Helena doesn’t know. But she can see it on Sarah’s shoulders, the constant guilt, all the places she ran from and did not return to.

Both of them went to that house on the island. Helena went in for her babies and came out with only one of them. Sarah went in for Cosima and came out with a stab wound. Helena is lucky, really. She knows. She wouldn’t trade Eve for anything, but—

“Rachel would kill her, if you tried to go back for her,” Sarah says.

Helena freezes, utterly still, but: no, Eve hasn’t woken up. Helena relaxes.

“I know,” she says.

“Helena,” Sarah says, “you know – you know I don’t want it to be true, but maybe Rachel already—”

“She can feel it,” Helena says. The words come out loud with terror. “Eve says she can feel it. I told her she had a twin and she said she knew, because she could feel it, when her sister was lonely or scared.”

“She’s just a kid,” Sarah says, and she reaches out and puts a hand on Helena’s shoulder. “If my mum had a twin, and I was a kid – she’s got a big imagination, Helena, you know she—”

Helena twists her shoulder away from Sarah’s hand. On Helena’s lap Eve frowns, clenches her tiny fist into the fabric of Helena’s pants. Helena puts a hand on her daughter’s back. “Shh,” she says. “Shh. I am here.” Eve calms. Her eyelashes tremble against her cheek as she dreams. On the television screen Anna finds Elsa, tucked away in her castle. _You don’t have to be afraid,_ Anna says, _we can do this together_ , but Helena knows Elsa is going to freeze Anna’s heart so she reaches for the remote and pauses the movie. Anna keeps reaching forwards anyways, because she doesn’t know any better. Helena watches her for a long time but Anna doesn’t move even a little bit.

“What if,” she says, “my – what if Eve’s sister is there, on the island, and she’s lonely, and she is waiting for Eve to come and find her. What if she is waiting for me to come and find her. What _if_ , Sarah.”

Sarah shakes her head; her jaw is stubborn. “No,” she says, voice fierce and low. “You’re not leaving your daughter here so you can go _die_ , Helena.”

“You did,” Helena says, and it was the wrong thing to say. Because it was cruel, but mostly just because it was true.

“Yeah, well,” Sarah says. “You’re a better mother than me, aren’t you.”

She makes to stand up and Helena reaches forward, grabs her wrist. “When I was in the desert,” she says, “why did you come for me. Why did you go look. Why didn’t you stay with Kira, and your other sisters.”

In the blue light of the television screen Sarah looks sick. “You know what?” she says. “Go ahead. Go running straight into Rachel’s knife, Helena, and I can tell _your daughter_ that her mum died for _shit_.” She jerks her arm out of Helena’s grasp and Helena wobbles. The resulting motion is enough to wake Eve, who makes a sleepy noise and then sits up. She blinks at Sarah and Helena, and then turns and blinks at Anna and Elsa, and then looks back at Sarah and Helena.

“Why’d you stop the movie,” she says.

“We had to have a grown-up talk, while you were sleeping,” Sarah says. All of her anger has been tucked away, and she’s smiling at Eve – or, trying to. The smile keeps melting on her face. Helena’s brain says: _this is how her face would look when she told Eve that you—_

“Oh,” Eve says. “About what?”

“Your auntie was trying to stop me from doing a stupid thing,” Helena says, without looking away from Sarah.

“You don’t do stupid things,” Eve says with perfect confidence. “ _Ty moya mama_.”

“ _Ya mozhu buty tvoyeyu mama i yak i ranishe robyty durni rechi,_ ” Helena says.

Eve blinks at Helena sleepily and then flops back down on Helena’s lap. “Thank you auntie Sarah,” she says into Helena’s knee, and then she’s asleep again.

“God,” Sarah says fondly, looking at Eve. “Wish it was always that easy.”

“I worry about her all the time,” Helena says, looking at the television screen. “I wake up every day and I worry. It hurts in my heart like a stone.”

“I know,” Sarah says, stepping closer. She holds out her hand, and Helena takes it.

“I want her to be here,” Helena says, “with her sister. They were supposed to never be separate. Not like us.”

“We found each other,” Sarah says.

Helena twines her fingers with Sarah’s, squeezes, and lets go. Sarah sighs at her and steps back, wavers towards the door. “Hey,” she says, and Helena turns to look at her. “You know if there was even a _chance_ , I’d—”

“Not you,” Helena says.

“Not you either,” Sarah says. She shifts from foot to foot. “I couldn’t lose you,” she adds, everything about her twisted up.

“Love you,” Helena says.

“Yeah, you too,” Sarah says, and heads back out of the room. Helena looks back down at Eve, like if she could stare hard enough she could look into her daughter’s skull and pick apart her dreams to find the truth in them. Is she dreaming her sister’s dreams, right now? If Helena said _I love you_ and _you have no idea how much I want to bring you home_ , could she – would she – but Helena couldn’t ask that of Eve, she knows she couldn’t. She sighs, but it does nothing to shift the weight inside her chest. On the television screen Anna still hasn’t moved. Helena keeps watching her anyways.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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